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A review by audreyintheheadphones
Walking the Amazon: 860 Days. The Impossible Task. The Incredible Journey by Ed Stafford
2.0
300 pages of how not to behave with cultures other than your own, how not to prepare for an expedition (Step 1: who cares about learning the language? AMIRITE?) and how to annoy everyone in the process. Stafford documents his 4K+ mile journey by whining about everything he encounters (jungle! insects! mean native people! Peruvian music! Peruvian drinks! his traveling companion! his native guide! ALL BAD) and whining about the trip as a whole.
This is a mind-boggling account of an expedition leader who didn't. He promised his financial sponsors that the party wouldn't hunt, then they hunted. He likes to brag about how he's surviving on his wits alone, but his native guides do all the witting. His co-expeditioner, Luke, decides to leave after three months, but that's clearly Luke's issue, not Stafford's ("I can't remember the exact exchange but it blew up when I told Luke he was shit at navigating"). Depressed and snappish and can't figure out why? Maybe it's the fact that you admit you're living on diazepam, Captain Life Choice.
All Stafford does is complain about the expedition he's mounted, and make fun of the people he meets:
--"We talked nonsense to old Quechua men to try to confuse them; and marveled at how foul old people's mouths could look after a lifetime of chewing coca and not brushing their few remaining teeth."
--"The Ashaninka lifestyle seemed to me to be both unsustainable and meaningless."
--"In my diary I seem to have referred to the old man as 'Mr. Wanker'"
--"Anyone who doesn't know what Peruvian music is like is very lucky indeed. Never enter Peru without earplugs. For sheer lack of talent and low-quality music, no other country compares. [My native guide] had tried to teach me about the distinct and different types of music from each region but I didn't bother to learn because to me they all fall under the same category. Utter shite."
And that's how Stafford approaches all his interactions with people he meets: he refuses to try learning Spanish or Portuguese and admits that when people take him into their homes for the night he makes no effort to interact but sits in a corner and sulks. This alternates with bemoaning his single state and how frustrated it makes him that people don't immediately like him wherever he goes.
While it's precious hard to screw up a book about trekking alongside the Amazon, Stafford does manage, stopping at too infrequent intervals to describe the jungle or any natural or manmade history of the area. It got that second star for being something of a spectacular trainwreck that just kept on exploding.
As far as that publisher's blurb about the purpose being to raise people's awareness of environmental issues: "I don't want to ever pretend that the charities and rainforest awareness were the reasons why we chose to walk the Amazon." p.22. Interestingly, in the Author's Note, Stafford discloses that since returning to London he's started giving motivational speeches.
And on that bombshell...
This is a mind-boggling account of an expedition leader who didn't. He promised his financial sponsors that the party wouldn't hunt, then they hunted. He likes to brag about how he's surviving on his wits alone, but his native guides do all the witting. His co-expeditioner, Luke, decides to leave after three months, but that's clearly Luke's issue, not Stafford's ("I can't remember the exact exchange but it blew up when I told Luke he was shit at navigating"). Depressed and snappish and can't figure out why? Maybe it's the fact that you admit you're living on diazepam, Captain Life Choice.
All Stafford does is complain about the expedition he's mounted, and make fun of the people he meets:
--"We talked nonsense to old Quechua men to try to confuse them; and marveled at how foul old people's mouths could look after a lifetime of chewing coca and not brushing their few remaining teeth."
--"The Ashaninka lifestyle seemed to me to be both unsustainable and meaningless."
--"In my diary I seem to have referred to the old man as 'Mr. Wanker'"
--"Anyone who doesn't know what Peruvian music is like is very lucky indeed. Never enter Peru without earplugs. For sheer lack of talent and low-quality music, no other country compares. [My native guide] had tried to teach me about the distinct and different types of music from each region but I didn't bother to learn because to me they all fall under the same category. Utter shite."
And that's how Stafford approaches all his interactions with people he meets: he refuses to try learning Spanish or Portuguese and admits that when people take him into their homes for the night he makes no effort to interact but sits in a corner and sulks. This alternates with bemoaning his single state and how frustrated it makes him that people don't immediately like him wherever he goes.
While it's precious hard to screw up a book about trekking alongside the Amazon, Stafford does manage, stopping at too infrequent intervals to describe the jungle or any natural or manmade history of the area. It got that second star for being something of a spectacular trainwreck that just kept on exploding.
As far as that publisher's blurb about the purpose being to raise people's awareness of environmental issues: "I don't want to ever pretend that the charities and rainforest awareness were the reasons why we chose to walk the Amazon." p.22. Interestingly, in the Author's Note, Stafford discloses that since returning to London he's started giving motivational speeches.
And on that bombshell...